We Wells boys loved to fish but not necessarily with our grandfather, William Henry “Pop” Wells — also known as Catfish Willie. Here’s one example why.
It’s a blistering hot southern Louisiana spring afternoon, sultry as a steambath, and we’re out on the creosote-covered fender of a swing bridge across the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway on the outskirts of our little town of Houma. Forget about shade or cover. I’m maybe 14 years old and have come with Pop and two of my five brothers. Wearing ball caps, cut-off jeans, T-shirts and sneakers, we boys are sweating like plow mules in the dead of August. No matter. We’re required to constantly work our oversized cane poles up and down with the promise — Pop swears — that if we jig our hooks baited with earthworms just right and at just the right depth, we will certainly catch a lunker cat.
It’s an irresistible notion. Awhile back, we’d stopped with my father at a roadside museum where hung an aging photograph of a 101-pound
